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Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout

Bubbly bubbly Jeffrey Morgan's Media Blackout #176!

Attrition — The Eternity EP (MVD Audio/Two Gods) :: Julia Weller sings with a haunting voice that combines the best of Nico with Diamanda Galás; Martin Bowes plays psychotic electronics that make Eno sound positively sane; and Franck Dematteis plays viola that makes nut case John Cale sound like nuanced Pierre Fournier. Recorded in 1996, this timely reissue is a must for anyone who listens to music that's recorded out where the buses don't run.

HiLoTrons — Happymatic (Kelp) :: Not only is "And if you fall, I'll follow you" a witty enough pop lyric, it's entirely indicative of the buoyantly bouncy tenor of this album which sounds like a Euro-skewed version of Devo with a slap-dash dollop of English Beat and Talking Heads via Malcolm McLaren. But not Eno.

Mothergong — Amsterdam (MVD Audio/Voiceprint) :: This one's recorded live in you know where at — I kid you not — the 2006 Unconventional Gong Gathering by a trippy psychedelic fusion band that's fronted by a doozy of a chantoozie named Gilli Smyth who sounds just like the second coming of Lady June. Now just in case you don't know who Lady June is — and let's face it, why would you? — she once recorded an obscure art rock album with Eno and Kevin Ayers called Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy. Come to think of it, Gilli Smyth may even be Lady June for all I know — and I know a lot.

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Peter Primamore — Grancia (MVD Audio/Blue Apples Music) :: "No synthesizers or samples were used and the ensemble was recorded live in the studio without a click track," says this non-Eno artiste in his egghead liner notes. He then proceeds to wax elaborate about the organic feeling of his work which, truth be told, is every bit as intriguing as he says it is — albeit in a gamut-spanning orchestral country fusion style which evokes a memory array that extends all the way from Cale's The Academy in Peril to Mahavishnu's Birds of Fire to Miles' Aura. Impressive, I know.